Floating Within the Thoughts in My Head

As I sit in my room, pondering about the events of this past week, I feel like I needed to say a few things. I suppose this would be the proper venue, so here I am, leaking my thoughts out to clear them from my mind. I'm sorry, dear blog, for ignoring you so much...I'll try to change that.

I will note that much of the content is simply conjecture and while there is documentation regarding these ideas, I want to develop my thoughts with my current knowledge (or rather, lack of it) before learning more.

I recall this this Simpsons episode where Lisa finds the skeleton of an angel during an excavation. The discovery sends the entire town of Springfield into arms as there begins a battle between those who felt that science was the answer to all of life's unanswered questions, while others felt that some things are best left to faith in religion. It led to one of my favorite Simpsons moments were a robot museum is burned down and a robot rolls out and laments, "Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?"

Of course, this hasn't been limited to this episode, as the debate between religion vs. science has continued all through time and likely will not come to a conclusion anytime soon. And it seems that with any heavy subject like this, one is forced to choose sides. And as I consider which team to take up arms with, I begin to learn about myself. If you weren't aware, I believe that I'm a religious person. I may not actively practice Islam, but I do hold many of its ideals within my heart (I know that seems somewhat hypocritical, but that's not the point and may be better for another post).

At the same time, I'm a Chemistry major and appreciate how science has developed to a point at which so many inexplicable phenomena can be explained that was once relegated to some form of faith. For example, the ancient Greeks explained the seasons through Hades' and Demeter's battle for custody of Demeter. Nowadays it's agreed that the seasons result from the Earth's axis spinning on a tilt. There's this idea that faith is used as an intermediate explanation until science can advance far enough to dissolve these beliefs with facts.

Personally, I don't see how the two cannot live in harmony. What exactly is so ridiculous about an omnipotent being having such a vast array of power? It seems no more far fetched than how this Earth came to be, considering how insanely low the probability is for everything to be in such a perfect balance. I recall hearing how if Earth was just a bit closer to the sun, it'd be much too hot to be habitable, while it would be a ball of ice if the opposite held true. I think there has to be a director creating a stage and guiding this movement. I suppose it is unscientific of me to have such blind faith. However, the idea that science will eventually explain everything is just another flavor of this mentality. What if the numbers don't add up? Then what?

At the same time, religion hasn't always been completely incorrect. I do know that there is evidence that the Qur'an has a few passages which state ideas that weren't scientifically proven until much later. An example is how the structure and appearance of a human embryo is correctly described--something that wasn't proven until recently with the development of high-powered microscopes.

As such, there is one concept that has always fascinated me. The idea stems from Metroids from the eponymous game series. And yes, I know I'm citing a video game in a discussion regarding science, but bear with me here. Metroids feed off of all sorts of energy as sustenance, which is done by ramming their unfortunate prey, digging their mandibles into them and extracting their energy. The interesting idea is that there isn't any actually anything extracted from the Metroid's target. Biologically speaking, there is no difference between a creature before and after a Metroid attack, aside from the obvious puncture wounds. However, the squealing space jellyfish are able to grow and evolve from this unquantifiable energy and are even able to inject it back into creatures to heal them.

This draws a parallel to "real" science, where there is practically the same connection between the living and the dead. As Dr. Manhattan put it, "a live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles. Structurally there's no difference." Considering that, what is life, then? Science thrives on the empirical, yet it seems that life cannot be quantified. I don't know what scientific theories there exist out there regarding this, but perhaps life is imparted through something that defies standard convention? A soul, if you may. There obviously is a clear difference between a living and a dead organism, and life is constantly referred to as a "miracle." Even moreso, life is purely a mystery in terms of its origins. Divine intervention seems like the easy way out, but sometimes the simplest explanations are correct.

And from a scientific perspective, there have always been breakthroughs which have developed into new perspectives, like the structure of an atom, which went through numerous revisions before finalizing on the current model. Perhaps this idea of a soul still obeys all the rules, but to a game that hasn't been discovered? In fact, just as light was proven to exist both as a wave and a particle (and undeniable evidence pointing to both), there could be a duality to all of this.

Yet, suppose "life" did have some sort of physical form? What if this essence of life extracted from a living creature was reduced to a basic chemical formula? It certainly has been humbling to see that we are nothing more than lengthy chains of the same material as pencil lead. Or that flies have more genes in their genome than humans by a significant amount. So what if "life" was nothing more than a puff of gas that's easily synthesized in a lab or something equally underwhelming?

It seems trivial, but the idea of something so grand and incomprehensible reduced to a simplistic expression is fascinating. And as you may be aware, the predecessor to modern chemistry can be traced to alchemy, which sought to engineer immortality, among other endeavors. Could the idea of quantifying and identifying exactly what life is bring chemistry back to its roots? I can see it now...people taking injections of pure life as a solution to all of their medical issues to the point where anything can become literally immortal.

(rereads what I wrote) Man, I was all over the place with that... who knew that religion, science, Metroid and alchemy all shared a common thread? I didn't even mean for it to develop like that...I meant to speak more how science and religion don't need to be mutually exclusive!